Environmental Ethics And Yellowstone: Preservation Of Geological Rarities

This article uses a core group of three arguments to support the contention that Yellowstone National Park's thermal sites deserve special efforts to preserve them, and that this goes above and beyond the general spirit motivating the national parks. It considers arguments having to do with educational value and rarity, and an argument that relies on aesthetic constructs. For purposes of evaluating the notion of rarity, comparison is made to work on the rare saline water preserve of Mono Lake. Part and parcel of this line of debate has to do with the notion that there has been a general lack of commentary on the value of geothermal areas. The work of William J. Fritz and Robert C. Thomas, Marc Hendrix, and others is cited.     

AFTER LYNN WHITE: RELIGIOUS ETHICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

The fields of environmental ethics and of religion and ecology have been shaped by Lynn White Jr.'s thesis that the roots of ecological crisis lie in religious cosmology. Independent critical movements in both fields, however, now question this methodological legacy and argue for alternative ways of inquiry. For religious ethics, the twin controversies cast doubt on prevailing ways of connecting environmental problems to religious deliberations because the criticisms raise questions about what counts as an environmental problem, how religious traditions change, and whether ethicists should approach problems and traditions with reformist commitments. This article examines the critiques of White's legacy and presents a pluralist alternative that focuses religious ethics on the contextual strategies produced by moral communities as they confront environmental problems.     

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION IN BIOREGIONALISM AND THE NEED FOR A DECOLONIAL ETHICS OF PLACE

Bioregionalism is an environmental movement that attempts to create decentralized, self‐determined communities connected to landscape and ecological features. Activists and scholars have used the phrase “becoming native” to describe the process of belonging to place. Despite its cultural appropriation, not only do bioregional writers still use the metaphor, but it has also been defended within religious studies. Instead of relying on these arguments to address ethical issues, claims to place need a decolonial framework. Looking at various voices within bioregionalism through Indigenous critiques displays both the movement’s issues as well as decolonial processes for local adaptation. Wendell Berry exemplifies the problems of bioregional ethics but also shows bioregionalism's capacity for decolonization.     

Evangelical Environmentalists? Evidence from Brazil

While scholarship on the relationship between religions and environmental attitudes has been inconclusive, evangelical Protestants present an exception: they consistently report less environmental concern than other groups. However, prior studies have largely been conducted in the United States. Following a recent “contextual” turn, we revisit the assumption that universal cognitive and doctrinal factors drive the previously documented negative association between evangelicalism and environmental concern. Leveraging qualitative fieldwork, nationally representative surveys, and a survey experiment from Brazil, we find that evangelical and Pentecostal affiliation and church attendance are not associated with reduced environmental concern; that members of these groups simultaneously embrace otherworldly beliefs and advocate for this-worldly solutions to environmental problems; and that being primed to consider divine intervention increased support for environmental protection. Even in a tradition emphasizing orthodoxy, doctrine appears not to exert a universal influence, a finding we suggest results from different issue frames in the United States and Brazil.     

环境保护心理学的研究综述

玛雅预言流传着一句话,地球并非人类所有,人类却是属于地球所有。在社会快速发展的今天,我们面临的环境问题越来越突出,如何更好的保护环境也成为社会发展的重要内容。本文对国内外与环境保护心理学相关的重要研究进行了系统的综述,并对我国环境保护心理学的发展提出了一些展望。     

Residues in the Secular: Whale Bones and Other Theological Relics1

This article develops the concept of the “theological relic”: a facet of secular life and culture that maintains traces of (and so remains bound in some way to) its genealogy in the theological. The theological relic, then, is something that fails to be either robustly religious or properly secular. It is, instead, a product of the relations between these social spaces. The article illustrates this concept by examining a cultural history of the whale, highlighting this creature's complex bonds with the theological. The whale, in other words, is figured as a theological relic: a creature of the secular that remains shrouded enough by traces of the theological that these vestiges of divinity are implicated in the whale's powerful late‐twentieth‐century cultural reconfiguration.     

Applied behavior analysis and the zoo: Forthman and Ogden (1992) thirty years later

The field of applied behavior analysis has been directly involved in both research and applications of behavioral principles to improve the lives of captive zoo animals. Thirty years ago, Forthman and Ogden (1992) wrote one of the first papers documenting some of these efforts. Since that time, considerable work has been done using behavioral principles and procedures to guide zoo welfare efforts. The current paper reexamines and updates Forthman and Ogden's original points, with attention to the 5 categories they detailed: (a) promotion of species-typical behavior, (b) reintroduction and repatriation of endangered species, (c) animal handling, (d) pest control, and (e) animal performances. In addition, we outline 3 current and future directions for behavior analytic endeavors: (a) experimental analyses of behavior and the zoo, (b) applied behavior analysis and the zoo, and (c) single-case designs and the zoo. The goal is to provide a framework that can guide future behavioral research in zoos, as well as create applications based on these empirical evaluations.     

The assessment of the non‐economic Environment in European companies

Abstract

The rapid changes in today's competitive environment can have a tremendous impact on company's performance. Companies have to tie resources to monitor these changes in order to survive. Political risk assessment is a managerial tool to cope with the uncertainties in the political environment.

The aim of the study was to find out how large European companies use this tool in their planning process. Of the responding companies 52.2 percent monitored their political environment regularly as a part of their on‐going planning process. Results of the study are presented in the paper.